It's the birthday of poet, novelist, story writer and essayist, Margaret Atwood, born in Ottawa, Canada (1939). Her father was a forest entomologist,
and she grew up in a log cabin in a remote area of Northwestern Québec.
Her novels include Surfacing (1972), The Handmaid's Tale (1985),
The Robber Bride (1993) and Alias Grace (1996).

"I became a poet at the age of sixteen. I did not intend to
do it. It was not my fault. My hair darkened overnight, my nose lengthened,
I gave up football for the cello, my clothes changed colour in the closet,
all by themselves, from pink to black. I stopped humming the songs from Oklahoma
and began quoting Kirkegaard..

It's the birthday songwriter Johnny Mercer, born in Savannah, Georgia,
(1909). Although he never learned to read music, he was one of the most versatile
and prolific songwriters of the last century. A beautician named Sadie Vimmerstedt
once sent him a line written in pencil on a scrap of paper: "I want
to be around to pick up the pieces when somebody's breaking your heart."
He wrote words and music around it and listed Mrs. Vimmerstedt as co-author.
After Tony Bennett made it a hit (1963), she collected $3,000 a year in royalties.

It's the birthday of English playwright and humorist W. S. Gilbert, born in London (1836). He was 34 when he met Sir Arthur Sullivan, and they started working together the following year. As Gilbert and Sullivan,
they produced a string of comic operas including The Pirates of Penzance
(1879), H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), The Mikado (1885) and The
Yeomen of the Guard (1888).

On this day in 1820, Antarctica was discoveredby 21-year-old U.S.
Navy Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer. Palmer had been the captain of his own
ship, the schooner Galina, for two years – a boat that he kept taking
deeper into the South Sea looking for seals to hunt. He came across a broad,
mountainous stretch of southern Antarctica that's now named for him, Palmer
Land. Like the rest of Antarctica, it's buried in about 7,000 feet of ice.

It's the birthday of Louis Jacques Daguerre, born at Cormeilles in
Normandy (1789), inventor of the first practical process of photography.
The first photographs had been taken by a Frenchman named Nicephor Niepce
in 1816. But it took eight hours exposure time and Niepce was only able to
partially fix that image. Working with iodized silver plates and mercury,
Daguerre got the exposure time down to 20 minutes. The process was named for
him, and by 1850 there were over 70 daguerreotype studios in New York City
alone.

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Although he has edited several anthologies of his favorite poems, O, What a Luxury: Verses Lyrical, Vulgar, Pathetic & Profound forges a new path for Garrison Keillor, as a poet of light verse.
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